You tell your doctor, that y' are ill
And what does he, but write a bill,
Of which you need not read one letter,
The worse the scrawl, the dose the better.
For if you knew but what you take,
Though you recover, he must break.

I bought an unction of a mountebank,
So mortal that, but dip a knife in it,
Where it draws blood so cataplasm so rare,
Collected from all simples that have virtue
Under the moon, can save the thing from death
That is but scratched withal. I'll touch my point
With this contagion, that, if I gall him slightly,
It may be death.

(Macbeth:) How does your patient, doctor?
(Doctor:) Not so sick, my lord,
As she is troubled with thick-coming fancies
That keep her from her rest.
(Macbeth:) Cure her of that!
Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased,
Pluck from the memory of a rooted sorrow,
Raze out the written troubles of the brain,
And with some sweet oblivious antidote
Cleanse the stuffed bosom of the perilous stuff
Which weighs upon the heart?
(Doctor:) Therein the patient
Must minister to himself.
(Macbeth:) Throw physic to the dogs, I'll none of it!

I do remember an apothecary,
And hereabouts 'a dwells, which late I noted
In tatt'red weeds, with overwhelming brows,
Culling of simples. Meagre were his looks,
Sharp misery had worn him to the bones;
And in his needy shop a tortoise hung,
An alligator stuffed, and other skins
Of ill-shaped fishes; and about his shelves
A beggarly account of empty boxes,
Green earthen pots, bladders, and musty seeds,
Remnants of packthread, and old cakes of roses
Were thinly scattered, to make up a show.

But nothing is more estimable than a physician who, having
studied nature from his youth, knows the properties of the human
body, the diseases which assail it, the remedies which will
benefit it, exercises his art with caution, and pays equal
attention to the rich and the poor.
- Voltaire (Francois Marie Arouet Voltaire),